


Untitled Masquerade Ficlet

by duc



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, Masquerade, Masquerade!verse, WE COULD HAVE HAD IT ALL, is the anthem of Star Wars, playing in Harpalyce sandbox
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 21:19:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4074226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duc/pseuds/duc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a civilian evacuations, Vader turns out to have hidden talents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled Masquerade Ficlet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Harpalyce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harpalyce/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Masquerade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/948249) by [Harpalyce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harpalyce/pseuds/Harpalyce). 



The Falcon was not exactly crammed full, Leia had certainly seen it fuller. In one memorable emergency evacuation, she had needed to climb a waist high pile of supplies to pass out on her bunk, and even the fresher had been used as storage. So all in all, the Falcon wasn’t full, she just seemed to be because this time instead of being crammed with supplies she was crammed with people.

Tiny people, people under 10 standard years of age. 20 of them, about half the refugees they were carrying. And only one crèche worker. A crèche worker that was trying his damnest to keep 20 or so traumatized and excitable kids under some semblance of control.

Which somehow meant that the one baby that wouldn’t stop screaming had become the Alliance’s responsibility.

Leia wanted to protest.

Not at the crèche worker. Clearly the poor man already had his hands full trying to keep the other kids calm. But there were two dozens other adults on the ship, someone might have stepped up.

Damn bystander effect.

The baby in the copilot chair sucked in a deep breath, then another, and another one. Everyone in the cockpit held their breath, hope bloomed in Leia’s chest. The baby hiccuped one last time and....

“whaaaaaaaaaaaa,”

They all eyed the wailing twi’lek infant morosely.

“Ok,” Leia massaged her temples. “So we’ve ruled out hunger, thirst and diaper,”

“He’s not feverish,” Commander Tano added, “and as best as I can determine, physically comfortable,”

Wrapping him in a blanket or lowering the thermostat certainly hadn’t worked. Neither had bouncing, singing, cooing and a host of other stuff Leia had lost count of in the previous two hours.

“Anything we haven’t tried yet?”

“Correlian ale?” Han said, deadpan.

It was probably a testament to Leia’s fraying nerves that she considered it for a second.

“No,” She said firmly. The baby was barely old enough to crawl, who knew what alcohol would do to him, even if drugging him into submission sounded more appealing by the minute.

“I didn’t mean for him, princess, I meant for us,” He drawled.

Drugging _themselves_ into oblivion when they were responsibly for a shipload of civilian was only marginally smarter, by which Leia meant: not at all. still....

The kid’s cry rose to a higher pitch again and Chewie moaned something Leia was reasonably certain was a Wookiee curse word.

“That’s it!” Commander Tano got up from her seat on the side bench and plucked the little boy from the co-pilot chair. Muttering about “desperate times” and “desperate measures” she turned on her heel and marched outside of the cockpit.

Vader, who had been leaning on the wall of the corridor, studiously reading last week’s supply report in an effort to pretend the civilians in the rec room didn’t exist, cocked his head in their direction.

“here!” Commander Tano plopped the baby in Vader’s arm. “Make. him. stop. crying.”

_Are you insane?_ The words rang inside Leia’s skull, but she didn’t have the time to voice them.

“what?!” The word came out of Vader’s voice in a strangled yelp, a lot higher than his usual baritone. “No!” He held the little bundle of wailing misery rigidly at arm length. “No! you can’t...” He continued, looking more distressed than Leia had ever seen him (and she had seen him half delirious with fever and bloody and bruised from torture).

He trust the baby toward Tano but of course that only made the kid’s cries turn into an indignant, ear-piercing shriek . Immediately, probably on instinct, Vader gathered him up to cradles him against his chest.

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh,” He started a bouncy, swaying motion, rubbing the babies back. “Shhhhhh, please don’t cry,” His voice gradually lost its panicked edge to take up the mellow tone people used with skittish animals and the very young sentient.

And the kriffing amazing thing was, it worked. the baby’s wail gradually diminished to whimpers. Not quite happy, but leaps above what he had been subjecting them before. Leia blinked. And then blinked again, not believing what she was seeing.

She looked at Tano, who simply smirked and raised the facial marking above her eye socket at her in a see? it was a good idea expression. At the door Han was looking at the scene open mouthed. So Leia wasn’t hallucinating, or at least she was hallucinating in good company. She turned back to Vader, who was still rocking, bouncing and crooning nonsense.

“... Yes, I know, little guy, this is very scary, but it’ almost over. You’ll be back with your parent soon, shhhhhhh,” The baby yawned and rested his head against Vader’s shoulder with the utter trust infants had. Too young to understand who he was trusting. Vader chuckled “Tired yourself out, didn’t you?” He said, one hand coming up to rest on the small skull, mindful of the tiny lekkus. He was looking at the kid with a smile and his whole expression was warm.

And suddenly Leia saw, in a flash that took a second and at the same time seemed to last forever, a second image superposed over him, the same pose and the same look, but another baby.

And then she was back on the Falcon and she and Vader where looking at each other. He broke off the contact with a flinch, eyes dropping to his boots and arms tightening unconsciously on the baby.

Leia took a shaky breath and turned on her heels, leaving the corridor past the engineering station and on to the crew quarter where she had a modicum of privacy.

She sank into one of the bottom bunks, legs wobbly. What the hell? She thought heart beating widely in her chest.. What the kriff? Leia had always known she was adopted, as far back as she could remember. Her parents had never hid it from her, nor from the wider public. So the truth of her parentage hadn’t hit her like a betrayal the way it had Luke. If anything it had only made her gladder, really, that she got to have Bail and Breha Organa as her parents. Because what would her life had been with her biological parents?

She had never.... Leia pressed her lips together in an effort to keep her face still. She had never pictured a life where he was there and it was good. If you had asked her two hours ago, she might have admitted, grudgingly, based on Luke’s “there is still good in him” and countless assertions by various people that Anakin Skywalker, circa the Old Republic, had been a good man, that maybe it would have been adequate.

But she would not have felt it, not in her guts, nor would she have thought that it could be what she had felt in that corridor: safe, happy, warm. Now she had gotten a glimpse of a “what if” and she didn’t know how she felt about it.

The door to the crew quarters swished open and Leia heard the stomp of boots, saw a black cape flutter for a second and then Vader disappeared into the fresher. Leia held herself very still, until the silence was interrupted by the sound of retching.

Well then. She slowly stood up, and walked back to the cockpit before Vader noticed her.

****  


Bonus Vader POV:

The child was breathing slow and steady now, on the verge of falling asleep, and Vader was slowly edging his way toward the supply crate someone had hastily repurposed into a cradle with blankets. Once he was at the crate, Vader rubbed the little back one last time, sending reassurance through the Force and nudging the little boy firmly toward sleep. Toward the cockpit’s door he could hear Solo and Ahsoka talking in hushed tones.

“....Nah..... used to..... kids love him....”

_“Master Skywalker!” A child’s voice in an empty room_

Bile rose in Vader’s throat. He hastily put down the baby, thanking the Force that the little guy didn’t wake up.

_“Master Skywalker, there are too many of them. What are we going to do?”_

He lurched forward, barreling through Solo and Chewbacca, not paying attention to their protests, and into the corridor. With a little luck - _there is no suck thing as luck_ \- he would make it to the fresher before loosing his lunch.  **  
**

**Author's Note:**

> Than you Haraplyce for letting my play in your sandbox!
> 
> This scene came to me as I was reading Masquerade and wouldn't let go so I wrote it (of course it ended up taking 5 times the time I thought it would, because a fast writer I ain't). 
> 
> I love the idea Anakin was good with kids, but of course since this is Star Wars I found a way to make it hurt. For everybody.


End file.
